FIFTY-FOUR
A few days in hospital got me on my feet again. I was declared free of blast lung, eye rupture and brain injury, which came as little relief because I hadn’t been informed enough to worry. Prasad and Abioye had no patience for a written report and spent several hours a day in my hospital room, Prasad using two fingers to prod my words into his chunky laptop. I gave them the whole story, at least as much as I could remember, but for one exception: Asmus’s theory that I was special–a manufacturer of magical chemicals. That didn’t make it into Prasad’s laptop. I hadn’t told Gallie or Boris either. I’m not sure why I held this back, but it seemed like sharing it would be nothing but trouble. Maybe the time would come, but I was just not in the mood for it.
It was during a visit from Boris that I learned Bess had escaped. This made me smile. She had told me she’d be fucked if Prasad would send her back to her twenty-first century misery, and it turned out he didn’t and she wasn’t. I was a little surprised by it but then I was surprised at my surprise. This is Bess, after all. I asked Boris how she could have escaped and he reminded me that she was being kept at the TMA site, not San Quentin. Stealing keys and driving away didn’t take a Houdini.
And Gallie was with me when the others were not. We said little. There was little need. We spent time watching the TV together in my hospital room, or her telling me about acceleration detection events of the day. I even learned how to express credible interest in her cat’s health. With that, I had Zhivov at a disadvantage.
I returned to TMA and Prasad informed me of my departure date. He thought it better not to linger. The next day I’d be in the place TMA has deemed my home, and the rules were immutable: that’s where I’d be going.
I awake to see Gallie looking up at me. Her head is on my shoulder and her arm draped across my chest.
“Good morning,” she whispers. But it really isn’t.
“Hi.”
We’re squeezed into the cot designed to barely accommodate one adult, but the fit feels warm and comfortable. “We can do it, you know. We can do what Bess did. Get in a car and we’re gone.” Gallie sighs.
“You’re no Bess. And neither am I.”
“No.” We lie quietly. “Do you think it’s really as screwed up as we think? As Asmus says it is?” She seems to be pondering it.
“I don’t know, Joad. I suppose he would say that. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not.” She strokes my chest. I should want to make love but my thoughts are too heavy. I kiss her forehead and sit up.
“It feels like I’m going to the gallows. But without having my favorite meal first.”
“Is your favorite meal a muffin?” Gallie asks.
“Yes!” I say in a how did youknow? voice.
“Then I have a silver lining for you,” she says, clambering over me to get down from the cot.
We meet with Boris, Prasad and Abioye in the conference room. There’s no chatter. Everyone knows what they’re about to do to me, and to Gallie. And they know we accept it. I’m handed a wrist accelerator and I put it on. Prasad had at least allowed me to pick my arrival point and I’d chosen the place on the Columbia River bank from where I’d first set out. The accelerator had been programmed to return here after I’d removed it.
I don’t hold Gallie, not here. I’m not that strong.
“We’ll meet again, Toad,” I hear Boris say. He’s right.
Then I’m bathed in bright sunlight and a chilled breeze hits me.
FIFTY-FIVE
The thought of returning to the dank and dismal place my home had become was too dispiriting and so I had checked into a hotel on the riverfront. From my window, I watch the kayaks and power boats go by, the children playing on the grassy banks, and couples strolling or cycling by together. In the evenings I walk out onto the pier behind the hotel and watch the darkening sky. A few miles north of here is the TMA site which I’m sure is in the process of being rebuilt, but I have no appetite for being there. Not yet. I receive phone calls from my TMA friends: my barnmates. Some sound as they always have. Some are changed.
We’d made an agreement, Gallie and I. It was an agreement to something neither of us really had the power to ensure. I would take a month to reach the right decision. A month to catch my breath in the place I’m from, to weigh up the bizarre circumstances, and then to do the proper thing. I agreed to the month. After all, for Gallie it was twenty five years, so it was the least I could do. I didn’t need the month. I didn’t need an hour. And the days passed sluggishly.
It’s the morning of the day. I’m early and I pace slowly around the path that follows the perimeter of the small park–my magical park that never was. I’d paced it a dozen times over the previous month as if to practice for today. I see a group of little kids chasing each other around the central rectangle as their parents watch on, laugh and chat. In the center of the rectangle is a pale, basalt column. To pass time I cross the grass and walk up to it. It’s about two feet in diameter and ten feet tall. On it I notice a bronze plaque and I read it.
This park is dedicated to Dave and Bess Levinsky
whose generous support of the City of Risley Park
